By Keith O’Sullivan

Today is a day that has occupied my mind for ten years, and sat heavier still on my shoulders for the last seven months. And somehow along the way, I managed to forget what date it was, only to rememeber when it was already mostly over.

Time is funny like that I guess.

It is hard to believe how ten years can seem like both an insurmountable period of time and a single instant.

Rest Well Dad

Legacy

I dream, and then I wake

The scent of freshly cut grass lingers a persistent petrichor an aggregate of early morning dew and tidy groundskeeping tracing the world in shades of green It is peaceful here,
out amongst the carefully tailored stretches of fairway and solitary islands More peaceful than elsewhere by far a silent oasis unconcerned with life

This is one of the good things a glowing spark drifting across memory the aroma of bacon and parsley sauce mingles with memories of damp earth and Deep Heat crude incense sanctifying a moment now lost in a wilderness left stretched and unattended

There are other things too the self-flagellation of a lifelong obsession with supporting the underdog there are dusty, scratched vinyl records etched with my youthful curiosity that I rescued from the attic Gallagher, Bowie and Dylan amongst others flying home in the slipstream of Hotel California The past crackles warmly as we relive it despite the imperfections

If a job is worth doing, it’s worth doing right

It sounds a pithy mantra but it has taken root deep down somewhere it drives and motivates even as its fiery tendrils burn Were those words a blessing or a curse? They grip tight and won’t let go and only now do I come close to understanding the depth of that obsession

I dream and then I wake and on rising I find it a hard weight to carry to shoulder the burdens of you and all that came after

And so I dream again and it is a fitful slumber